Can a blind person see? The very idea seems paradoxical. And yet, if we conceive of “seeing” as the ability to generate internal mental representations that may contain visual details, the idea of blind vision becomes a concept worth investigating. This book examines the effects of blindness and other types of visual deficits on the development and functioning of the human cognitive system. Drawing on behavioral and neurophysiological data, it analyzes research on mental imagery, spatial cognition, and compensatory mechanisms at the sensorial, cognitive, and cortical levels in individuals with ... More

Can a blind person see? The very idea seems paradoxical. And yet, if we conceive of “seeing” as the ability to generate internal mental representations that may contain visual details, the idea of blind vision becomes a concept worth investigating. This book examines the effects of blindness and other types of visual deficits on the development and functioning of the human cognitive system. Drawing on behavioral and neurophysiological data, it analyzes research on mental imagery, spatial cognition, and compensatory mechanisms at the sensorial, cognitive, and cortical levels in individuals with complete or profound visual impairment. The authors find that the brain does not need eyes to “see.” They address critical questions of broad importance: The relationship of visual perception to imagery and working memory and the extent to which mental imagery depends on normal vision; the functional and neural relationships between vision and the other senses; the specific aspects of the visual experience which are crucial to cognitive development or specific cognitive mechanisms; and the extraordinary plasticity of the brain—as illustrated by the way that, in the blind, the visual cortex may be reorganized to support other perceptual or cognitive functions. In the absence of vision, the other senses work as functional substitutes and are often improved—pointing to the importance of the other senses in cognition.